Busy bee

Life has been fairly busy in October, surprisingly so actually.

The realisation of graduating in seven and a half months time has kicked in, and I've started thinking more seriously about what life will hold after the "well done" cards have completed their exhibition on the shelf in my lounge and pats on the back have subsided.

I learned some valuable lessons about what to do and what not to do, after I graduated from university back in 2001.

Things not to do:

• Spend my entire final year "concentrating" on the end result, thereby forgetting to do anything else than plan for the finals.
• Ignoring the idea of life after finals, until I've completed my finals.
  
• Think that just because I've graduated, the potential employers will be beating down my door, the job offers will be pouring in.
• Ignore the college/university careers advice service.

Put simply, in 2001, while a lot of my peers were busying themselves by harrassing the careers advisory service, sending out CVs, covering letters, and double checking their application forms, I was "taking a break" between essays with a bout of TV. Graduating was a wonderful experience, but the summer that followed of unemployed "what now?" hell when I had no new term to look forward to was pretty horrid.

Which is why I've made the decision not to make the same mistakes this time round.

So this October, I've been:

• Participating in a Calumet/Nikon college roadshow, by attending a talk by a professional - and successful - photographer and taking photos in a three-hour challenge;
• Doing work experience at a national newspaper in Glasgow, learning a lot about what they really get up to;
• Contacted a pro photographer, and quizzed him about pretty much everything that springs to mind;
• Borrowed the college kit, so that I can take it home, experiment with it, and add another "I can use this type of camera" tick to the box of things I can do;
• Started to market myself as someone who can provide a photographic service...

I won't go into much more detail than that, because I'm all too aware of counting my chickens before they've hatched. But I'm hopeful.

One of the things I've really learned, is that people seem genuinely interested in what I can do, and it's given me a huge boost of confidence and self-belief. Of course, it might be a bit different when I'm faced with picture editors, art directors and so on, who I imagine as being a bit of a dragon's den for the would-be professional photographer.